I still prefer smaller games or games by smaller dev teams. Don’t get me wrong, AAA titles are fun but it’s like going to the movies, it’s predictable - it’s consistent - and it’s mindless.<p>My biggest gripe is that these smaller, “starter” games usually don’t get much play. Everyone wants to immerse in a loading screen space sim but can’t stand well-painted pixel sprites? Crazy.<p>There’s still hope. Hit games are hits not because of just their art but because of their play. Fez, for example, had pretty mediocre art. What it did have is an awesome 2.5D world. Doom, at the time, had great art. It hasn’t aged well. However, the level design, textures, and concepts, and play are still fantastic.<p>My only advice is if you want to make games, start making games. Who cares what your avatar looks like. Make it fun. @ works just fine.<p>Also, Commander Keen art splashes were top notch. The only thing missing was pro dithering.
Kinda a diff topic but if anyone else read "Doom Guy" - what did you think of it?<p>I know it's not what this interview (blog) is about but I feel like compared to Masters of Doom this one had a little too much "narrative" and "drama" and felt like it was an answer to certain things discussed in Masters of Doom which he wanted to set the record straight.<p>Another weirdness - i.e. early into the book John Romero says that he has a super-power like ability to remember everything perfectly...which to me sounds like some big ego bullcrap? Because there are a lot of things that he conveniently did not discuss in the book but which fans know happened! So what kind of super-power
The biggest thing that kills indie developers is taking a waterfall approach to game design. "I want to make an XYZ genre game with mechanic ABC and a story about 123." There is absolutely no way to know if that combination of designs will be fun at all, and it won't be until they're too far in development before they realise it's irredeemable.<p>Best advice I ever got on this subject: identify what you want the most impactful element of the game to be. Is it a unique combat mechanic? Is it a compelling story? Make that first and only that. If it's impactful, take it further and build more around it. Show it to people as early and regularly as possible. If people tell you it's boring, they're probably right, but don't listen to them if they tell you how to fix it. If you can't fix it, toss it and move on. You cannot afford to find out if your game is fun 2 years into development. Also, most of your ideas are probably terrible and you won't start having better ideas until you make <i>and finish</i> a number of projects.
I was just thinking about Romero. I was watching the "Wha Happun?" episode about the System Shock remake, and I realized... back in the day we made fun of Romero for his mismanagement of the Daikatana kerfuffle: schedule slip after schedule slip, changing engines twice, the staff quitting and needing to almost be completely replaced, it's no wonder the game turned out crap. But so many of today's games have most or all of these problems. System Shock (2023) changed engines, had massive staff churn, and considerable schedule slips (taking seven years to Daikatana's four), especially when COVID-19 hit. But by paring back the ambition and focusing on delivering an experience faithful to the original, they got it out the door despite doubts from the fan base and it was a hit. So today, some games do turn out good despite mouldering in development hell for the better part of a decade. Of course you still get your fair share of buggy messes (which may be rehabilitated with a post-release patch) and complete misses like Mighty No. 9.<p>So it seems like maybe we've hit a complexity threshold beyond which it stretches human feasibility to turn out a good to great AAA game within a reasonable time frame. And maybe Romero was just one of the first people to "go big" with Daikatana, and he hit that threshold before everyone else. His ambition (and ego) exceeded his actual reach, but... few if any had attempted such a large scale project before, aspiring to reinvent the FPS and add RPG and story elements to it. Granted, Half-Life made everybody else look like chumps when it came to embedding story into an FPS -- but Daikatana was announced long before Half-Life congealed.<p>The man deserves full credit for learning from his most famous boondoggle, and focusing on smaller games rather than epic genre-busters that he doesn't quite have the ability to manage the development of.
"13 games that we made in 1991 alone"
Wow. And these games weren't just shovelware.<p>I grew up playing Commander Keen games, and to this day have not finished a single one.
> Indie teams do not spend enough time making smaller (and less profitable) games first before transitioning to multi-year projects.<p>This worked well for romero and carmack. A game a month was it? That's how you refine your skills.
It’s a fantastic read, and with his sense of recall being so strong it provides a lot of detail you other might not get. He does say in the end he might have made it a bit more positive than some of the moments may have actually been, but I’ve not seen any of the other people from those times contradict what he’s said.<p>I also found that Shareware Heroes by Richard Moss was a good, if more general, accompaniment.
If you're here because you're a FPS fan, you should check out the new FPS Documentary: <a href="https://fpsdoc.com/pages/limited-run" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://fpsdoc.com/pages/limited-run</a>
Looking forward to reading this, thanks for putting it on my radar.<p>I really enjoyed Masters of Doom - which has been discussed here plenty on HN - <a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?q=masters+of+doom" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://hn.algolia.com/?q=masters+of+doom</a>
These ideas hit home for me and heavily overlap with the ideas in How Big Things Get Done: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Big-Things-Get-Done/dp/0593239512" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.amazon.com/How-Big-Things-Get-Done/dp/0593239512</a>
If you’re into nostalgia, John is live talking about open source / quake, but mostly AI: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/aM7F5kuMjRA?si=jBbM-n7m9h1_DmvN">https://www.youtube.com/live/aM7F5kuMjRA?si=jBbM-n7m9h1_DmvN</a>
People that had success decades ago seems to be forgetting that it was decades ago. Doom was released 30 years ago. In a much, much smaller market and in a lot less competition. He is saying people are not making smaller games before moving to bigger projects but people, collectively, are doing that. For every "13 games that we made in 1991 alone" back then, now there are probably 130 games that gets released everyday. Not one of them will probably make any real money let alone be popular.<p>It is a bigger market. Sure you are increasing your chances if you release more, if you get better but still it is mostly about luck at this point for indie devs. Even with the name John Romero and some big publishers behind he is not able to replicate his success today
This is a very poorly written article. Some examples of the multiple things leap out at me as bad style:<p>> John Romero on his book Doom Guy and developing games at a small scale<p>The title is styled in block caps. So in fact it says<p>JOHN ROMERO ON HIS BOOK DOOM GUY<p>What is a "book doom guy" and how can Romero own one? Sloppy.<p>> Posted On September 25, 2023 By zukalous<p>And yet, "CZ" is used as the interviewer shorthand. So how are we supposed to know who C.Z. is? That's both sloppy and deceitful, as the author is trying to hide behind a poor pseudonym. Grow up.<p>> I think the biggest reason so many indie games “fail”<p>Quotation marks are not emphasis. This is a #fail.<p>> it occurred to me that at the start, he and the founders<p>Comma splice. Very poor English.<p>> My meeting John Romero at GDC 2022<p>"My meeting $PERSON"?<p>That's both bad style <i>and</i> broken grammar.<p>"My meeting with $P" would be better.<p>"I met $P" would be better still.<p>"The author and $P" would be better than that.<p>Almost anything would be better, in fact. Eugh.<p>> CZ: How did you scope it?<p>"Scope" is not a verb. Arguably, "scope out" is a phrasal verb, but the author -- I use the word very loosely -- doesn't say "scope out".<p>> The scoping on our very first game<p>Yeah, it's not a gerund, either.<p>Oh, there are so many it's just painful to read, and I have better things to do than sub-edit this.<p>> What Software company offices looked like in the late 80s.<p>Random capitals. Missing apostrophe. This is just such a mess, with random passive voice and all sorts of bad writing, and not so much bad editing as <i>no</i> editing.<p>I gave up. For me, this is unreadable. Shame: Romero is an interesting man and this was an interesting time in the industry.